Most pneumatic vehicular tires manufactured today are tested and adjusted if needed on a tire uniformity machine or optimizer commonly known as a TUO in the industry. The tire uniformity machine applies a load to the tire tread while it is inflated with a load drum, sometimes called a roadwheel or load wheel in the trade. Since such a tire uniformity machine normally processes many tires each day, material from the tire is transferred to the surface of the load drum. As this material accumulates, the force readings of the tire are influenced. This necessitates the cleaning of the peripheral surface of the load drum to ensure correct force readings of the tire thereagainst.
In the past, the load drums have been periodically manually cleaned using any number of materials usually including appropriate solvents since the material is typically a silicant or decomposed silicone known as polydimethodaldiloxene. Because such manual cleaning operations were time consuming from a machine down time standpoint and also from a labor standpoint, this cleaning procedure has not been very effective in overcoming the problem associated with the accumulation of material on the load drum surface. As a result, there remains a need for a means for automatically cleaning the load drum of a tire uniformity machine to ensure accurate readings while at the same time minimizing personnel time to carry out the cleaning operation.